world of men's style / fashion / grooming

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Boutiques are always better if there’s an element of transgression on display. Usually, that means putting your wildest gear out front, but it can also mean making the most of an outré address.

Nuzyn, Amsterdam’s latest boutique is taking the latter approach, setting up shop in a former brothel in the red-light district with most of the old fixings intact. It’s a good idea—and, depending on Nuzyn’s clientele, just plain convenient—but what about the city’s endangered red light district? After all, the last thing a house of ill-repute needs is a rent hike. And after the first boutique lands, the strollers can’t be far behind…

Best of all, the site itself is bright and, aside from a few artfully angular background shapes, remarkably pleasant to look at. Compared to the usually dour boutique sites—we’re looking at you, Odin—it’s positively summery.

Online boutiques are a good idea, but the Black Buoy is the first time we’ve seen three labels with small stocks join together in a single site. It’s a good idea; no one of them would have been able to hold our interest for very long, but together they make up quite a store. Plus, we managed to find this charcoal button-down, from the small Max & Suzanne, and stitched together right here in New York.

The Choosy Beggar turned us onto the site, and has a code that should get you 15% off.

We’ve been following New York’s Assembly since it opened this past April, and they’ve turned into the city’s best mix of vintage rarities and well-chosen designer gear. But we didn’t expect them to turn into designers.

Granted, most boutique owners probably don’t have the knack for design that Armas does…but it would be interesting to see them try. And as long as they keep things limited edition, we doubt there’ll be too much harm done. We might even get a few new labels out of it.

Manhattan can be a hectic place for the brick-and-mortar crowd—in both good and bad ways—but it’s nice to see what a brand does when it has a little more room to breathe.

On the heels of his recent Manhattan shop, our favorite southern tailor Billy Reid has just opened up a Nashville location, and it looks like the extra real estate was put to good use. Like the New York store, most of the furniture here is reclaimed from points south to give the place an anachronistic ambiance. But don't be fooled: the business is entirely modern.

This is Reid’s seventh boutique and, other than the New York, they’re all in the South—from industrial Dallas to Reid’s hometown of Florence, Alabama. And while everyone can probably conjure up images of classic southern style—other than Colonel Sanders, that is—nobody’s been interested in becoming the Great Southern Designer. He has his work cut out for him.